Futures start here. Where first steps, new friendships, and confident learners are born. At KinderCare Learning Companies, the first and only early childhood education provider recognized with theGallup Exceptional Workplace Award, we offer a variety of early education and child care options for families. Whether it's KinderCare Learning Centers, Champions, or Crème de la Crème, we build confidence for kids, families, and the future we share. And we want you to join us in shaping it—in neighborhoods, at work, and in schools nationwide.
At KinderCare Learning Companies, you'll use your skills and expertise to support the work (and fun) that happens in our sites and centers every day. From marketers and strategists to financial analysts and data engineers, and so much more, we're all passionate about crafting a world where children, families, and organizations can thrive.
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The Principal Project Manager will lead large-scale, cross-disciplinary projects in a dynamic environment, perfect for those skilled in navigating complex technical challenges while prioritizing customer experience and business objectives. This high-impact role involves overseeing the successful delivery of critical initiatives on our strategic roadmap, requiring significant personal accountability and autonomy.
The ideal candidate will excel in planning, designing, and executing processes with product and engineering teams, driving decision-making and roadmap development to achieve measurable organizational impact. They will thrive in a fast-paced, innovative setting, collaborating with diverse teams and effectively managing bottlenecks and escalations while balancing business needs with technical constraints. Key qualities for success include strong leadership, negotiation skills, analytical abilities, and the capability to break down large projects into manageable tasks for timely delivery.
Qualifications
- Own successful delivery of large, high impact and highly cross-functional strategic initiatives while simultaneously and accurately tracking a set of smaller projects within product teams.
- Create program governance structures that empower teams to achieve successful outcomes.
- Manage executive and execution governance, program status reporting and Sr. Leader escalations & communications.
- Define multi-org product and operational standards, track & reports program OKRs, dashboards, and processes.
- Drive strategic cross-functional planning, leading discovery, and prioritization by closely partnering with product managers, Scrum leads and engineering leads to develop program plans that include product and execution roadmaps, dependency tracking, and capacity plans.
- Facilitate Intake, prioritization, Monthly budget reviews, Annual and Quarterly planning, and weekly Scrum-of-Scrum between Product, Engineering, and partner teams across the enterprise.
- Drive continuous improvement across multi-org program teams enabling product and operational excellence focused on value delivery and benefits realization.
- Influence program outcomes to align with KinderCare's IT, Product Management & Corporate strategy.
- Establish value framework and instrumentation to track & report value delivery, OKR and program metrics, communicate across all levels of leadership across the enterprise to ensure deliverables meet strategic objectives of program and enterprise.
- Establish strong relationships with key stakeholders across Sr. Leadership team, Field Operations, Product Management, Engineering, UX, Marketing, Finance, HR, and Corporate Strategy & Development. Develop a close working relationship with all stakeholders to ensure that the team is focused on the highest priority outcomes and is helping deliver the most value to our field and families.
- Develop common mechanisms for program status reporting and escalation, for keeping key stakeholders informed on the progress, dependencies risks, and issues.
Preferred Qualifications
- 10+ years of Program/Project management disciplines including scope, schedule, budget, quality, along with risk and critical path management experience.
- Experience managing projects across multiple engineering teams, building sustainable processes and coordinating field releases.
- Working experience in Agile and PDLC. Expert in program and project management methodologies (Waterfall, Agile, etc.)
- Experience defining KPI's/OKR's used to drive multi-million-dollar businesses and reporting to senior leadership.
- Ability to quickly adapt to faster pace, shifting priorities, demands, and timelines through analytical and problem-solving capabilities.
- Experience communicating and representing work to senior leadership and framing discussions to gain valuable feedback and experience working with technical management teams to develop systems, solutions, and products.
- Project Management certification(s) required (PMP, PgMP, PMI-ACP etc.)
- Requires slide deck preparation and strong presentation skills.
- Results-driven professional with strong tactical skills and a focus on execution
- Ability to influence and make some project decisions without authority.
- Highly analytical, fact driven, and is process-oriented with high attention to detail.
- Lean Six Sigma experience a plus.
- Ability and appetite to lead and engage diverse and equitable teams
Our benefits meet you where you are. We're here to help our employees navigate the integration of work and life:
- Know your whole family is supported with discounted child care benefits.
- Breathe easy with medical, dental, and vision benefits for your family (and pets, too!).
- Feel supported in your mental health and personal growth with employee assistance programs.
- Feel great and thrive with access to health and wellness programs, unlimited paid time off and discounts for work necessities, such as cell phones.
- ... and much more.
We operate research-backed, accredited, and customizable programs in more than 2,000 sites and centers across 40 states and the District of Columbia. As we expand, we're matching the needs of more and more families, dynamic work environments, and diverse communities from coast to coast. Because we believe every family deserves access to high-quality child care, no matter who they are or where they live. Every day, you'll help bring this mission to life by building community and delivering exceptional experiences. And if you're anything like us, you'll come for the work, and stay for the people.
KinderCare Learning Companies is an Equal Opportunity employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, national origin, age, sex, religion, disability, sexual orientation, marital status, military or veteran status, gender identity or expression, or any other basis protected by local, state, or federal law.
Our benefits meet you where you are. We're here to help our employees navigate the integration of work and life:
- Know your whole family is supported with discounted child care benefits.
- Breathe easy with medical, dental, and vision benefits for your family (and pets, too!).
- Feel supported in your mental health and personal growth with employee assistance programs.
- Feel great and thrive with access to health and wellness programs, paid time off and discounts for work necessities, such as cell phones.
- ... and much more.
We operate research-backed, accredited, and customizable programs in more than 2,000 sites and centers across 40 states and the District of Columbia. As we expand, we're matching the needs of more and more families, dynamic work environments, and diverse communities from coast to coast. Because we believe every family deserves access to high-quality child care, no matter who they are or where they live. Every day, you'll help bring this mission to life by building community and delivering exceptional experiences. And if you're anything like us, you'll come for the work, and stay for the people.
KinderCare Learning Companies is an Equal Opportunity employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, national origin, age, sex, religion, disability, sexual orientation, marital status, military or veteran status, gender identity or expression, or any other basis protected by local, state, or federal law.